I can see why in prison the person who has been in the cell longest gets the Bottom bunk… there is a level of convenience to the bottom bunk that you don’t appreciate until you are sleeping in one.
It is Monday and i will be changing hostels… not because Veselka is a bad hostel, it had a 9.6 rating on hostelworld.com but mainly because I didn’t plan on being in Ukraine for this long however plans change and the country is actually quite amazing, the people are friendly and the city is beautiful… and cheap!
It’s 24 hours since i was in chernobyl and i haven’t succumbed to radiation poisoning, however it can take a few weeks for symptoms to appear …… the tour company hasn’t had any one contaminated or fall ill from its tour experiences since its Incorporation.. I guess this is a positive thing
It’s about 10.30 AM and my check out is at 12PM , i then have to check in to the Dream Hostel at 2PM so i had 2 hours of lugging a pack 3KM to the hostel.
It was a relatively easy walk.. all down hill through an older part of the city past old statues and street art, the hostel I’m staying at is located off the street down an alley way with a courtyard and it allows the guests to hang outside and drink and chill out on the seats made out of old pallets
There is also a cafe/bar right next door to the hostel and is cheap to eat and drink which makes it very convenient
After i had dumped my bag off i thought i better explore the new area and get my bearings, its a small suburb located by the River (about 10 minutes walk), the waterfront is very similar to the esplanade in dunedin but on a much grander scale.
As i walk down the water front i can see a giant glowing Stainless steel Arch upon the hill.. curiosity got the better of me and i decided to take a stroll up to the ‘Friendship of nations Arch”
This arch is yet another Display of power from the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union built this archway to commemorate 60 Years of The USSR and a collaboration of 1500 Years of Kiev City, there has been new Laws passed called the Decommunization Laws, the country has made it illegal to display Soviet symbolism and also with part of this buildings, towns and villages will be subject to renaming to fall within the new laws being procured out of the Government… eventually this beautiful arch will be decommissions and pulled down, in its place a new Monument will be built to recognise the kiev people without any attachment to the USSR regime that is now recognised as a criminal movement.
It was starting to get onto 6PM and i needed to get a plan together for the balance of my stay in Ukraine, i sat down in the hostel and called LOT Airlines (polish Air) they are relatively cheap to commute with and are code share partners with Star Alliance s i can obtain Airpoints status and also Airpoints dollars whilst i commute throughout the eastern block of Europe.
I had an exit ticket out of Kiev on Thursday but I hadn’t given much thought to my next step of my journey so i called the Hot line for LOT airways and pushed my flight out a week to the 16th of August this will give me time to organise my next movements.
It was about 7.30 and i decided to wander outside to the courtyard, i struck up a cigarette and got talking to a guy from the Netherlands, he is here in Ukraine learning Russian at a language school in town for the next 2 weeks, he has a test tomorrow and has decided that the best way to learn Russian is to drink vodka!
There were a mixture of people hanging out in the courtyard
1x Australian 🇦🇺
1x British 🇬🇧
2 x Kiwi (including Me) 🇳🇿
1 x German 🇩🇪
1 x Dutch 🇳🇱
4 x Ukrainian 🇺🇦 Hostel workers
They had ran out of beer at the Cafe on site so the only option for alcohol was to walk down to the supermarket and buy a 1$ bottle of vodka, when i returned we all drunk to about midnight sharing our story’s of places we had been and our experiences.
Ro
Intertwined in this conversation and a lot of vodka shots and majority of the crew are heading to Odessa , which is a town in the south by the Sea it is about 600KM from Crimea….however every person i have met has told me i need to go down there for a look.
I booked train tickets and accomodation for 5 days and will commute down there on Thursday evening with David from Germany and Rory from New Zealand . Kylie the Britt will then arrive on Friday.
The time was creeping onto 12.30AM time for a quick feed and off to bed
^^ i found this man playing some lovely music under a street lamp^^
“Ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go.”
Quantum Entanglement 